From 2.1s LCP to 0.7s — and +24% conversion
Rebuilt theme with custom sections, lazy-loaded hero video, deferred non-critical JS.
Conversion rate
Senior talent across design, engineering and marketing — on a single predictable monthly plan. Spend hours on brand, on WordPress, on SEO, or any mix that fits the month.
Partner-verified across every major stack
Trusted by operators across 8 platforms
Why a Rivet retainer
Agencies are slow.
In-house is expensive.
Freelancers disappear.
You pay for a project manager, account handler, designer and a junior developer — for work a senior would ship in a week.
Great if you can afford senior + junior + benefits + office. Most growing businesses cannot — and do not need full-time.
Fast and cheap until they ghost mid-sprint, take a full-time job, or vanish on holiday with your root password.
A retainer is all three — without the downsides.
One senior specialist. Predictable monthly fee. Pause any time.
Every discipline, every platform
Brand, product and marketing design · Full-stack web development (WordPress · Shopify · Webflow · Laravel · Next.js) · SEO, content, paid and CRO. Hours are fungible across all of it.
Logos, wordmarks, visual systems and brand voice — iterated across a year, not locked at launch.
What Rivet does
Brand systems, product UI and landing-page design — shipped weekly, never a one-off. Figma-native, handoff-ready.
What Rivet does
SEO, content, paid acquisition, lifecycle and analytics — operated continuously, not pitched as a one-time project.
What Rivet does
Custom themes, Gutenberg block development, WooCommerce, performance audits, headless builds with Next.js.
What Rivet does
Online Store 2.0 themes, Hydrogen, custom apps, checkout extensions, Liquid + metaobjects.
What Rivet does
Advanced CMS builds, custom interactions, Webflow Logic, Memberships, and migrations in or out.
What Rivet does
Custom SaaS, internal tools, Filament admin panels, APIs, Stripe integrations, queue workers.
What Rivet does
App Router, server actions, i18n, authentication, headless CMS integrations, edge deployments.
What Rivet does
Content-driven sites with island architecture, MDX, perfect Lighthouse scores, lean hosting.
What Rivet does
Inherited a mess? Rivet maintains and untangles legacy PHP, Node, Ruby, Django and framework-less codebases.
What Rivet does
CloudPanel, AWS, Vercel, Fly, Hetzner, Docker, CI/CD, backups, monitoring and incident response.
What Rivet does
By the numbers
Mixed-discipline wins
Brand refreshes, theme rebuilds, SEO overhauls, paid-acquisition playbooks. Six case studies across six disciplines.
Rebuilt theme with custom sections, lazy-loaded hero video, deferred non-critical JS.
Conversion rate
Replaced 14 plugins with a custom block theme + Woo Subscriptions. 60% faster admin.
Admin TTFB
Migrated from Squarespace. Rebuilt lead capture with Memberships + Logic + Salesforce sync.
Qualified leads / mo
Built mastering pipeline with queue workers, Stripe, Filament admin. 2,300 paying users in year one.
MRR at year end
Hydrogen + Sanity. Editorial-driven product pages, 0.4s FCP, CDN-hosted images.
Avg session depth
Four-store migration with shared design system, custom apps for inventory sync.
Ops hours / week
Want to be the seventh?
Start a retainerWhat clients say
"Rivet fixed things our last three agencies couldn't touch. The retainer model means I can text Rivet about a bug and know it's handled — I don't think about my site anymore."
"We replaced our $9K/mo agency with the Scale plan and got faster delivery, better communication, and senior work end-to-end."
"He ported our entire Webflow site + built custom Logic flows in three weeks. The previous agency had a six-week estimate and hadn't started."
"Built our MVP in Laravel, shipped in five months, and stayed on retainer through year one. Without him we'd have raised a seed round for less."
"The Hydrogen build is the fastest Shopify storefront we have. Rivet treated our brand guidelines with respect — rare for a developer."
"Four Magento stores moved to Shopify Plus without a single support ticket from customers. Literally invisible migration."
"The retainer pays for itself in the first SLA incident. I don't pay hourly for panic calls anymore."
Deep dives
Rebuilt theme with custom sections, lazy-loaded hero video, deferred non-critical JS.
Conversion rate
Replaced 14 plugins with a custom block theme + Woo Subscriptions. 60% faster admin.
Admin TTFB
Migrated from Squarespace. Rebuilt lead capture with Memberships + Logic + Salesforce sync.
Qualified leads / mo
Estimator
Drag the slider. Rivet will recommend the tier that fits.
Flat monthly pricing
Scale up, pause, or cancel any time. Same quality bar on every plan — only hours and response times change.
Small sites that need a reliable pair of hands — design, dev or marketing, any mix.
Most popular — for teams shipping across design, dev and marketing weekly.
Embedded studio for complex programs across design, dev and marketing.
Honest comparison
|
Retainer (Rivet)
|
In-house hire | Traditional agency | Random freelancer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $1,800 – $7,200 | $9,000 – $15,000 | $8,000 – $20,000 | $2,000 – $10,000 (variable) |
| Time to first ticket closed | Same day | Ramp-up | 1–2 weeks | Depends on mood |
| Senior level work | Always | Depends on hire | Junior does 80% | Sometimes |
| Cross-platform expertise | WP · Shopify · Webflow · Laravel · Next.js | 1–2 stacks | Depends on agency | Usually one stack |
| Response SLA | 4h critical on Growth+ | Business hours | 1–3 business days | No SLA |
| Paused / cancelled any time | Yes, monthly | Severance | 3–12 mo contract | Yes |
| Knowledge of your stack retained | Yes, I stay | Yes | Team rotates | Until they leave |
Every plan includes
No tiered "premium" features — reliability, performance, security, growth and ops tooling are the baseline. Here's every thing you get from day one.
Beyond the retainer
Squarespace → Webflow, Magento → Shopify, WP → Headless. Fixed-scope.
New design, new platform, same domain. Six-week average.
Headless storefront with Sanity or Contentful as CMS.
Custom app, Stripe, Filament admin, in six weeks.
Guaranteed <1.5s LCP or Rivet keeps working until it is.
50-point audit + prioritised fix list + schema implementation.
Refreshed identity: logo, wordmark, palette, tokens, templates.
Figma design system with dev-ready tokens and a Storybook.
60-day sprint: schema, site architecture, 10 cornerstone pages.
Meta + Google setup, creative, first 60 days of optimisation.
From zero to shipping
45-minute call, shared folder for credentials, stack inventory, goal-setting.
Full read of your site — performance, security, SEO. Triaged list of quick wins.
Fastest win from the triage, shipped to production by end of week 1.
Uptime, backups, security patching, Slack wired in. You can sleep now.
30 days in: what was fixed, what's next, hours used, hours rolling over.
Response times
Every ticket gets a named owner and a response-by time, tracked in a shared view. If Rivet misses it, your next month is free — that has never happened, but the promise stands.
| Plan | Critical | Standard | Next-day | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | — | Next business day | 48 hours | Email-based support. |
| Growth | 4 hours | 24 hours | 48 hours | Slack-based support + priority queue. |
| Scale | 4 hours | 12 hours | 24 hours | Direct phone / SMS channel. Dedicated Slack. |
Security & compliance
Weekly full + daily incrementals. 30-day retention on a separate provider from your host.
Every plugin, package, gem and container image you run is monitored for published CVEs.
You own every credential — Rivet uses scoped, revocable access. SSO where possible.
Pre-written runbooks for site compromise, data loss and DNS outage. Tested quarterly.
Consent banners, data-export endpoints, retention schedules. Rivet can sign a DPA.
Every change tested on a ring-fenced staging URL before it touches production.
What Rivet knows
Brand, product and marketing design — Figma-native with proper tokens, ready for engineering.
SEO, content, paid, lifecycle and analytics — run as a continuous operation.
Block themes, Woo, headless, plugin dev.
OS 2.0, Hydrogen, apps, Liquid.
CMS, Logic, Memberships, interactions.
Custom SaaS, Filament, APIs, queues.
App Router, RSC, server actions.
Content sites, island architecture.
Hosting, CI/CD, monitoring, backups.
Frequently asked
Who is behind this
A senior-specialist retainer team. 11 years shipping for US, Canadian and European operators. Remote-first, working North America hours.
Rivet was founded to give growing businesses the one thing they actually need: a senior team they can reach before something breaks, not after. Every site shipped is personally code-reviewed, tested, and deployed. No juniors, no handoffs, no agency layers.
Guides & playbooks
Headless WP is not a silver bullet. A decision framework from 20+ builds.
The exact checklist I run on every Shopify theme to get under 1.5s LCP.
Hidden costs, churn, junior developers — the honest comparison founders never get.
Let's talk
Tell us about your site. We'll send back an honest audit and a plan recommendation within one business day.